TORI BODINE – ILLUSTRATOR

Tori! Thank you so much for doing a Q&A with us. Please tell us a bit about yourself. Your background, present and future goals?

Hey! Thanks for having me. I haven’t had a formal education in art but I’ve definitely always been creative. I grew up on a sailing boat with my family which involved many long journeys with nothing to do but make up stories and draw pictures. I’ve definitely carried this on from my childhood and in more recent years my imagination has focused more on documenting girls like me doing something particularly mundane. I’ve worked on some EP covers for some awesome bands and have had work in the very cool, GIRLS/CLUB zine. In the future I hope to keep exploring and developing my style while continuing to produce work that people can look at and say, ‘Hey! That’s me!’

Your transparency and honesty shines in all your illustrations. What are you conveying with your pieces?

I’m an avid people watcher and day dreamer: I think that all my inspiration for my work comes from something I’ve done or seen my friends do. There are a lot of little bits of my friends’ lives in my pictures, from their activities to their duvet covers. I like to think that people can relate to the art I make, sometimes they’re not the most flattering of portrayals, but often those moments are by far the most beautiful and honest.

Which has been your personal favourite piece to create, and why is that?

My favourite piece is one called Mi Familia. It’s a portrait of my nearest and dearest housemates, complete with my pet rabbit, Wilbur, and a house favourite crisp brand, ‘Jalepeno Grills’. It’s one of the first smaller pieces I created and definitely helped me technically as I was obsessed with getting the likeness just right.

You use collage to create your pieces, what is it about collaging you enjoy?

I’d never even thought about using collage until I worked on a film about the Matisse – The Cut-outs exhibition at Tate Modern. One of the lines in the film talks about how Matisse ‘carved into colour’ and before then I’d never really considered collage as sculptural and I’d definitely never thought about creating images with cut-out paper, as opposed sticking down printed images. I like collage because its texture adds emphasis to facial expressions, illustrates perspective and I like the thought-process that you’re forced to put into the colour because there’s no blending allowed or painting over.

You’ve been drawing an illustration a day on your Instagram. What advice do you have for people who aim to stay creative?

Keeping creative can be really difficult, especially trying to have a constant pool of inspiration. If I’m finding it hard to come up with fresh ideas, I try and participate in Instagram art tags which give you a daily ‘word prompt’, like #yayeveryday2016. This is always a great way of getting into the swing of producing work everyday and it also stretches your imagination as you try and interpret the topic in your own unique style. Ultimately I think the best way to keep creative is to try-out every artistic thought that comes to you and not be afraid of diverging from a medium that you feel comfortable with – you never know, you might suddenly discover your true talent in something you’d never even thought of.